The Binman’s Guide to Selling, the self publishing route to success

It’s an interesting time for aspiring writers, and people who want to get their message out to as wide an audience as possible. Traditionally self publishing was looked down upon, as ‘vanity publishing’, and seen in a negative light. However these days when we all have greater means to find the right audience for our ideas through our own social media channels (twitter, blogs, facebook, pinterest, whatever your poison is), it is often a more viable and even lucrative route to go down. Especially when it is possible to directly assess the reach of your potential publisher, and see if they even have as many followers on twitter as you do.

Publishers these days will generally offer you about 5% from the sale of each book. Self publish and you might be looking at somewhere between 30 & 80%. Oisin Browne’s book has some great tips to getting your brand out there, and is itself also a great 3D calling card for the business.

The book is broken up into a series of bite sized ideas. He mentions in the foreword that you don’t need, and perhaps shouldn’t, read it from start to finish. While that may seem a little counter intuitive, in this case it’s true. We also read it in chunks.

Don’t just be judged on price

The parts of the book that work the best are the ones where he shares actual experiences on the road of things he actually did to help try and nail down the sale. Browne also discusses the importance of not merely trying to beat your competitors based on price. Being the cheapest doesn’t mean you necessarily provide the best service, and leaves you open to simply being undercut by someone else who offers your customer a lower price. Quality is important, and delivering a good, reliable service is worth more to most customers than simply being the cheapest option in the market.

Passionate about self-publishing option

Browne clearly enjoyed the process of creating the book, as he then went on to start creating a follow up one on Marketing, which will be out soon, as well as Russian and Spanish translations of the first book. Talking to him too, he was passionate about his positive experience of going down the self publishing route. If you have a good social media profile, and the ability to promote what you do, then it may be the better option for selling your book and yourself / product / brand as well.

One to consider reading if you are looking to grow your own business.

You can read more about Oisin Browne and The Binman’s Guide to Selling here.

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